


taking off emily dickinson's clothes

by smartlike



Category: Gilmore Girls
Genre: F/M, Season/Series 03
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2013-09-15
Updated: 2013-09-15
Packaged: 2017-12-26 14:39:34
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,613
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/967129
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/smartlike/pseuds/smartlike
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>"I thought you wanted to." She says it again, a little kid repeating something they want to be true and Jess knows now what she looks like when she's about to kiss you, has spent the last months breaking the moment before Rory kisses you into milliseconds, into tiny looks and the feeling of warm breath on his face and the smell of cherry and coffee and mint. "I mean," her voice is too loud for how close they are now. "That's what you said."</p>
            </blockquote>





	taking off emily dickinson's clothes

**Author's Note:**

> Originally posted at http://www.obsessivetendencies.net/am/

He's almost decided it's not that big a problem after all, until one day during sixth period chemistry class, Jess looks down at his copy of _The Stranger_ to see that he's doodled "Rory" in the margin. It's not exactly killing an Arab because it's fucking hot out, but he doesn't remember doing it, he didn't intend to do it and it makes his eyes feel dry and itchy when he sees the letters smirking up at him in dark blue ink.

Of course, letters can't fucking _smirk_ , he reminds himself as he stands up, rattling the row of beakers and glass tubes he was supposed to be using. He pushes through the door of the classroom just before the befuddled teacher notices and says, "Mr. Mariano?" But before he hears anything more, Jess is down the back stairs and headed to the exit next to the music room. He stands outside in the sun, clenches the thin paperback in his fist and considers throwing it into the nearest trash can. But, he doesn't have another book with him and he has an hour at least before Luke will let him back into the diner without an interrogation, so he shoves the book back in his pocket and kicks at a rock on the sidewalk before heading away from the school.

Away from the school, but not towards the diner and there's not really much more of this pathetic little town, so Jess isn't surprised when he finds himself at the dock. Not surprising, but completely irritating, just like everything else about Stars Hollow. He glares at the water and flops down on the damp wood. He should have peeked into Shane's history class and gotten her to skip out with him. He reaches into the side pocket of his vest, pulls out a cigarette and a lighter with a scratched-up Mets logo on the front. 

He doesn't light the thing, though, just stares at the lighter, presses the end into his palm and jumps about three feet in the air when behind him Rory says, "I thought you quit."

Jess takes a deep breath and then another and then sits without moving. Rory reaches out with the toe of her ridiculous black-and-white school girl shoes and taps his arm. "Jess?"

Jess breathes in and out one more time, lights the cigarette and finally tilts his head until he can see her, all gawky arms, flat, wispy hair, and wide-open eyes. He shrugs. "Who told you that?"

She wraps her arms around herself, right under her tits, pushing them up and Jess rolls his eyes at himself even as he realizes he never noticed that grey sweater was so thin. "No one," she says, shoulders and chest rising a little bit and Jess takes a drag off the cigarette to distract himself. "I just haven't seen you smoking since you came back."

He blows smoke out into the perfectly clean air, messing that up too, and wonders at just what else she's noticed since he begged Luke to let him come back to his little prison. "Bad day," he says and then instead of asking what he really wants to know, "Shouldn't you be at school?"

Rory frowns, lips pushing together into a little pink dot of annoyance, and nods her head, chin emphatically brushing against the white collar of her shirt. "Paris is ruining my life," she says and Jess can't make himself look at anything other than her lips, so he sees the formation of each word-- the sharp 'o' shape on "ruin," the press of her teeth into her tongue on "li" and then into her lower lip at the end of the sentence. He doesn't say a word, because it's been months and he's still inclined to follow her instructions.

"If she keeps this up, we'll go down as the worst administration since Nixon and Agnew," Rory sits down on the wood, not too close, but close enough that Jess can smell something faintly fruity-- soap or shampoo or maybe cherry lip-gloss. He knows she wears cherry. She looks up at the sky and lets her fingers play with the zipper pull on her ugly yellow back-pack. "Impeachment will seem like a good time after the senior class gets through with us."

Jess is still staring at her lips and he can feel the top of his book pressing into his lower back and he breathes in smoke and flicks the ash into the water. Rory follows it with her eyes and wrinkles her nose just a little, probably unconsciously, but it's enough. Jess stops her tale of prep-school political intrigue. "Why are you telling me this?"

He looks away from her mouth in time to see her eyes cloud for a second before she curls her knees to her chest and shakes her head. "You asked." He tells himself not to look up her skirt even as he feels his neck and eyes moving to do just that. "Well, you asked if I should be in school and this was sort of the long way around to that answer." 

She pulls at the hem of her skirt, adjusting it so it falls neatly over her knees, but Jess has seen enough to have the long line of black tights floating behind his eyes when he blinks. 

"Which is yes, by the way. I should be in school, but the last period was a student government meeting and it was cancelled, mostly because I think the advisor thought Paris was going to call in her palace guards. So I was sent home and caught the earlier bus." Rory's fingers are laced together on top of her plaid skirt and Jess can see where her pale almost-pink nail polish is chipped on her right thumb.

Jess grunts to indicate that he was listening. He squeezes the cigarette butt between his fingers, watches the ashes flutter out and into the air. A few seconds pass and Rory clears her throat. "What about you?"

"Left." Jess thinks maybe if he doesn't look up, he can get through this without fighting with her. Because that's his goal, since yelling at her doesn't make him feel better, even if she deserves it more than Luke will when Jess goes home angry and wanting and completely incapable of reading Camus anymore. Yelling at her just means that her eyes get bigger and her brow furrows and suddenly she's like some metaphor from some poem Jess probably, no definitely, hates-- something about innocence or clouds or a force of nature that can't help any of the damage it causes, but all wrapped in flowery words and a rhythm that can be put to a tv theme song--

"--your day?"

Jess missed her entire question, so he looks up and frowns at her. "What?"

She inhales sharply and he didn't even fucking do anything and why does it matter anyway? "I asked what was wrong with your day?" she repeats, voice carefully steady.

Jess doesn't say 'you,' just bites his lip hard enough to leave marks and lets out a puff of air meant to be a laugh. "School. Chemistry. This delightful little town."

Jess runs his tongue lightly over the indentations in his lower lip and Rory says, "I thought you wanted to come back" and she stares at his mouth the whole time.

Jess doesn't move his tongue, he doesn't answer, he doesn't breathe and he swears he can feel the air move when she leans closer to him. 

"I thought you wanted to." She says it again, a little kid repeating something they want to be true and Jess knows now what she looks like when she's about to kiss you, has spent the last months breaking the moment before Rory kisses you into milliseconds, into tiny looks and the feeling of warm breath on his face and the smell of cherry and coffee and mint. "I mean," her voice is too loud for how close they are now. "That's what you said."

Jess wants to kiss her, has wanted to pretty much since he marked her as the only interesting thing in this whole place. But he's angry with her, angry with the half steps, the way her lip turns down and her fingers flutter when she says 'Dean', the way her face gets razor sharp when she sees him with Shane, like she couldn't have put a stop to that before it even started. He's angry and he knows that if she kisses him it will end with that broken look on her face again, which mostly means he wants to kiss her, but he doesn't want her to kiss him, because she doesn't know what she wants. 

So, it's fine when there's a splash behind him, a fish or a bird or something perfectly picturesque in the perfectly picturesque body of water that provides the backdrop to their 1950s movie scene. It's fine when she's startled, fine when she jumps up and away from him and pulls a section of her hair straight. It's completely fine, because he absolutely didn't want her to kiss him.

"Yeah," he stands up and drops the crushed remains of his cigarette into the water. "That's what I said."

He doesn't run, just walks away from the dock. And she doesn't even call after him like his chemistry teacher had. When he's back on the path into town, he pulls the Camus out of his pocket and skips ahead a page-- away from the blue letters he's decided to pretend aren't there-- because it's not like he's going to make much sense of the story, anyway.


End file.
